Landscape!
If you have ever wanted to figure out how to bust on your friends in a mean way, yet creative enough to make everyone laugh instead of scream at you, check out my 3 day workshop coming up at Art Students League November 1-3 from 6:30pm to 9:30pm to sharpen people's caricature skills.
Molly has a fantastic new thing she started in the beginning of September. A year ago she applied for a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library. It's very prestigious and basically it provides authors with everything they need to help them finish the current book they are writing. You get a private office in the main branch of the library on 5th Avenue and 41st Street. You know, the one with the two lions in front. They get you all the things you need for your office and most importantly, access to all of their rare books etc. If you're a research junky, this is your Mecca. They also pay you a monthly stipend for the next 9 months. This all means that for the first time in Molly's career, she has a day job. A 9-5 working shlub.
I couldn't be more proud of her. One month in and she has already accomplished so much. I have been enjoying how we both have been adapting to this new development. First off, I'm even more self conscious about her seeing ANYTHING I write. When they say “write what you know”, the humbling take away is realizing I know nothing. But here I am doing it anyway.
The main observation I keep noticing is the difference between work that you have to show up at and work from home, or the freelance life style that has been my way of life for mostly the last 30 years. I had the traditional 9-5 job the first few years I lived in New York City until the freelance work kicked in. Well, it was only traditional in the sense that I head to be at the shop at 9am. I was working at a mural company. I started with occasionally cleaning the bathrooms, loading and unloading supplies, sweeping and mopping, and prepping canvases for other artists to come in and make copies of master works of art for fancy department stores. It was a great learning experience. It was usually a 9-8 job. Being a non-union shop I got paid shit and overtime pay was a dead unicorn, it never happened.
My transition from going in to work at a job site to working at home was interesting and mostly fun. I managed to pick up work from a small comic book company run by a shady character in Long Island. It was awesome. I started making twice what I was at the mural shop and I could stop and get coffee or take a piss whenever I wanted! The best part is that I had more control of how much I could make each week being paid by the page. Marvel had been paying me for every drawing of a monster with Conan the Barbarian in it and right after the Long Island company hired me Marvel offered me to ink one of their Ghost Rider titles. My income tripled and the only bathroom I had to clean was my own.
Molly has a pretty sweet deal with her 9-5. She's doing it because she wanted to do it. She Luuuuves research. She's surrounded with really smart and supportive people. And she gets a great little office in an impossibly beautiful building. We've been waking up earlier than we used to but we still start the day with several espressos as always. Lately there is a game of chess and then she gets ready to go in. They don't have a set time for her to be there or a time clock like I had, so she still has a little more flexibility to show up when she wants to. She dresses up every day now as opposed to rolling out of bed, drinking an espresso and doing whatever needed to be done before thinking about what to wear. It's not a dramatic change but I am noticing.
I'm seeing advantages to this type of work schedule and maybe how I can apply it to being a freelancer. My “go to” thing was making my gym the thing that I did at specific times to anchor my day around. I never talked much with my fellow freelance friends about how they make sure they get their work done. Some have mentioned their gym time as a way to keep honest. I suppose people have their rituals upon waking up and that is a way. The dangerous thing with freelance is being able to embrace the snooze button. I am naturally a night owl and will regularly stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning. Waking up at noon really isn't as productive for me as it used to be!
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